Budget Intel Overclocking - Pentium D 805 and Celeron D 356

While everybody is waiting for Intel to release the next big thing, Conroe, the release of two new processors almost caught the enthusiast and media off-guard. The Pentium D 805 and Celeron D 356 are priced lower than the competition so are they interesting for the budget friendly overclockers out there? Let?s take a closer look and find out.

Celeron D 356 Overclocking and Benchmarks

Benchmark CPU scaling Pentium D 805

Overclocking Celeron D 356

Overclocking the 65nm Celeron D 356 went quite smooth and with the large multiplier the CPU speed rocketed sky-high until the same FSB wall was reached, the end result is a 1.5Ghz overclock with only 1.4v vcore.

3DMark03 Comparo

To make things interesting AMD’s latest, the FX-60 was added to the comparison, default it runs at 2.6Ghz but overclocked to 3Ghz it was stable when using adequate cooling.

Although the FX-60 beats the D805 easily in the CPU test the overall score is in favor of the D805, which is weird, repeating the test several times didn’t change the outcome. The Celeron D 356 has a clear Ghz lead but it doesn’t translate in better performance as it trails the other two configurations.

Overall thoughts

Pentium D 805

The price of this CPU is extremely low which makes it a winner as a budget CPU, even when not considering overclocking, a Dual Core CPU at this price is the best thing Intel has done up until now this year! They’ve also included a better standard Heatsink/Fan combo which supports auto fan speed adjustment, allowing the Fan to be quite silent when running idle. For the price this D 805 runs almost as fast as the best out there when overclocked.

The draws backs are its high power consumption and when overclocking you’ll have to invest in better cooling to keep the temperatures down. The Asus P5LD2 limits the overclocks to ~200FSB, going any higher you loose the SATA ports.

Celeron D 356

With its smaller manufacturing process this CPU runs cooler and uses less power, when you step on its tail it overclocks like crazy even with modest air cooling, reaching speeds which could only be had with sub zero cooling one year ago. However its reduced cache size makes it slower than the competition even when running at close to 5Ghz! The new Celeron D will make an excellent competitor for AMD’s Sempron which has been regarded as the budget-friendly CPU… until now?

Pricing April 2006

The Asus P5LD2 can be found for $116 at Newegg, the Pentium D 805 for only $129. The Celeron D 356 was not listed. In Europe the Intel D 805 is available from ~€120 and the Asus board for only ~€90.